MAIN MENU

Basics

Class

Gender

Race

Conclusion

References

About Critical Social Research (1990)

Search

Contact

© Lee Harvey 1990, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024

Page updated 8 January, 2024

Citation reference: Harvey, L., [1990] 2011, Critical Social Research, available at qualityresearchinternational.com/csr, last updated 8 January, 2024, originally published in London by Unwin Hyman, all rights revert to author.

A novel of twists and surpises

Critical Social Research

5. Conclusion

5.5 Knowledge as process
Critical social research is about a constant shuttling back and forth between concepts and data, structure and part, past and present, theory and practice, involving a continual process of reconceptualisation. The work is never done. At any point in time a dialectically developed understanding can be framed and communicated. However, the formulation and communication is not the knowledge; its not another grain in the bucket, but itself part of the continual process of knowledge development. Critical social research, in directing its attention to oppressive social structures sees the development of knowledge as intrinsically concerned with engaging prevailing social structures, ideological forms and taken-for-granted interpretations. It is this engagement and its impact on ways of looking and developing knowledge that is crucial, rather than the articulation of a set of techniques that can be mimicked.

The exploration of the case studies shows that it is undesirable, and even impossible, to disentangle method from theory and epistemology. Methodology is the interface of all three and to attempt an explanation of the methodic practice of critical social research independent of substantive theoretical concerns and underlying presuppositions is to ignore the interdependent nature of critical social enquiry. There is no such thing as critical social method. There is, equally clearly, a way of working towards critical social research. This is a dialectic and totalistic approach that operates at the level of methodology.

However, as the case studies illustrate, critical social research makes considerable use of four approaches: critical case study; radical historicism; critical ethnography; and structuralist techniques. This is not, in any way, meant to delimit what approaches critical social researchers can adopt nor do these four approaches constitute a set of mutually exclusive alternatives.

References

Top

Click here for a pdf of Conclusion
© Lee Harvey 1990 and 2011, last updated 9 May, 2011

Next: 5.6 Critical case study